… living the beautiful tension between what is, and what will be …

Cast Your Bread

The tears formed as I plopped down in the middle of the road. I refused to go backward: I KNEW He was good, and good to me. It was a truth that fires had buried so deep in my soul I couldn’t turn around and retrace my steps. Yet the basket of question marks I held in my hands refused to let me walk forward. I was stuck. With a holy stubbornness refusing to go back, and a prideful stubbornness refusing to walk on, I sat. In all the refusing wrestling within me the most control I could muster over my heart was refuse to cave to either side – and so I sat. Tears flowed into the questions. They represented so many things: people, circumstances, relationships, emotions and even God Himself.

I’m not very good at casting my bread. The sowing-of-the-seed-in-investment kind or the food-hurling kind. When I invest in something I like to go all the way in and know what the end will produce. That there will be a tangible return that was worth whatever the investment cost was.

Solomon has a different perspective.

Cast your bread upon the waters,
For you will find it after many days.

Give a serving to seven, and also to eight,
For you do not know what evil will be on the earth.
If the clouds are full of rain,
They empty themselves upon the earth;
And if a tree falls to the south or the north,

In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
And he who regards the clouds will not reap.

As you do not know what is the way of the wind,
Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child,
So you do not know the works of God who makes everything.

In the morning sow your seed,
And in the evening do not withhold your hand;
For you do not know which will prosper,
Either this or that,
Or whether both alike will be good.

In life, and primarily in the Lord, we don’t know what the turn of our investments will bring. I observe the wind and so I do not sow. I look at the clouds and say ‘but it will rain’. But what if the rain is what waters the seeds I sow?

‘I will give rain to your seed which you sow’ (Isaiah 30:23)

Do I understand how the Lord knits bones together in the womb? Or why some pregnancy ends in the miscarriage of a child, while others end in a long term investment of a child? But BOTH children live? And both are known by the Father?

For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them. Psalm 139:13-16

So I don’t understand the works of the God who made everything. And knows me, and knows the road I sit on.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139:1-3

I don’t need to understand when I sow and when He tells me to sow because He understands.

In the morning sow your seed,
And in the evening do not withhold your hand;
For you do not know which will prosper,
Either this or that,
Or whether both alike will be good.

I don’t know what will prosper or whether both alike will be good. But I do know that He will always be good, and I will always be known.

My Pastor recently talked about how we all want to know the end, and to know what the will of God is for our lives. To some extent we do or can know what His will is. But to become fixated on what the will of God and the calling/plan of God for your life long term can cause you to miss out on what God has for you right now.

I’ve been guilty of missing out as I wrestle with trusting Him in the questions. God doesn’t always let me know what the investments (casting my bread upon the waters) will yield in my life or others. The Father isn’t withholding His love from me when He doesn’t answer my questions about the things I’ve sown. His silence about tomorrow is an invitation to know Him today.

If or when I need to know about tomorrow, and the answers to my questions, He will show me.

So I stand up slowly and seed the questions into the wind. I am known today. And so are you.